SUMER
(2020- )
Project in collaboration
with the
French writer
Book out in
September 2025
"Le Sumérien avait mis au point un laboratoire où il traitait des images qu’il avait récoltées dans la rue. Les traiter signifiait, pour lui, les déchiffrer. Il ne lui suffisait pas de voir, il voulait lire."
SUMER (fragment) Arthur Larrue
"The Sumerian had set up a laboratory where he processed images he had collected from the street. Processing them, for him, meant deciphering them. It was not enough for him to see; he wanted to read."
SUMER (fragment) Arthur Larrue
ORDER
(2014-2019)
Book published by RVB Books in 2021
Winner of the MAST Photography Grant on Industry and Work First Prize in 2015
ORDER covers a body of work carried out between 2014 and 2019 in different megacities around the world. This project pursues a subjective hypothesis about the reflection of advertising images in human appearances and behaviour in urban life.
Following the classic methodology of street photography, Óscar Monzón goes further by extracting moments and spaces which (due to their scenography-related and gestural precision) enter into direct dialogue with the images of the adverts that are ubiquitous in these locations, showing to us the opposite message or an interpretation of the consequences. These adverts, at first set aside from the narrative of the project, appear in the sequence as animated elements, as real and alive as the scenes that are documented in the project.
KARMA
(2009-2013)
Book published
by RVB Books and
Dalpine in 2013
Winner of the Paris Photo / Aperture First book Award in 2013
Regard sur la nouvelle scéne photographique spagnole. LE BAL. Paris, 2014
KARMA is a project that was carried out in Madrid between 2009 and 2013. It presents cars as a means of transport connected to the beings that inhabit them. Unconscious longings for our savage past are manifested in the aggressive designs of the bodywork and headlamps, inspired by predatory animals; in the boundless power of the motor or our behaviour when driving. The inner realities of humankind have their effect on the exterior. This work displays a free interpretation of the term ‘karma’, whose origins can be found in the Sanskrit noun ‘kar-man’.
Through a photographic language that eliminates any illusion of depth, bodywork and human skin are transferred to the same surface, revealing the result of a direct confrontation with the object portrayed: in the dead of night and directly illuminated by flash, a decision that emphasises the tension inherent of city´s traffic. Publicity values like power, independence, autonomy or freedom are transformed into aggressiveness, separation, competitiveness and alienation in a discourse that offers the opposite message to the codes used in car advertisements.
KARMA audiovisual (excerpt). Watch full. Video and music by Óscar Monzón
KARMA. Fresh Gallery. Madrid, 2014
AutoPhoto. Fondation Cartier pour l´art contemporain. Paris, 2017
EXTASIS, second book by photographer Óscar Monzón, stands as a continuation of his analysis of technology and advertising, shifting his attention to the phenomenon of mass tourism. The proposal brings together a collection of landscapes made in one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world: the Iguazú Falls, which are crossed by diagonal lines suggesting the striking of these images while the object that interferes in the framing is progressively unveiled: the selfie-sticks of the tourists who visit this enclave and that complete the crossing out -X sign- of the landscapes we observe.
Through such mechanism Monzón creates a graphic synthesis that illustrates our gradual abandonment of reality, relegating the scenarios and experiences that it offers us to mere consumption objects mediated by digital technology and therefore also susceptible to be devoured and discarded in favor of the world of the images. Relying on a risky editorial design, the author strives to point out disappointment or disillusion as one of the main consequences derived from consumption and from the substitution of the world by the simulacrum of the images.
Blank Paper. Stories of the Immediate Present.
Les Rencontres d´Arles 2017
*Works mounted on a reflective wall, exhibition shots made with camera flash.
ÉXTASIS exhibition at Sala Equis, Madrid. 2018
Óscar Monzón is a Spanish visual artist born in 1981. He has published 3 books: KARMA (RVB Books, Dalpine 2013), ÉXTASIS (Dalpine, 2017) and ORDER (RVB Books, 2021).
He studied photography at Madrid ́s Artediez school (1999-2001) and after founding and being part of the BlankPaper collective (2003-2017) together with Ricardo Cases, Julián Barón, Alejandro Marote, Mario Rey, Fosi Vegue and Antonio Xoubanova, he has worked on various photography and multimedia projects, that had been exhibited at Fondation Cartier pour l´art contemporain and Le-BAL in Paris, Tokyo´s IMA gallery, IvoryPress gallery, Círculo de Bellas Artes and Teatro Fernán Gomez in Madrid, Barcelona´s Photo Colectania, and at Les Rencontres d ́Arles, Breda Photo and Lianzhou Photo festivals. He has received a grant from the College d ́Espagne in Paris, the Paris Photo-Aperture Foundation First Book Award and the MAST Photography Grant First Prize on Industry and Work.